Violin is a very rewarding, worthwhile pursuit – but there’s no denying that it is work, (sometimes hard work!) and that sacrifice is involved: sacrifices of time, finances, energy, etc. My hope is that through the study of violin my students will learn that work is a positive thing. When we work hard and work well, we experience worthwhile results. I have listed below some ways that you can make the most out of your lesson time. Most of these ideas are aimed toward streamlining the environment to honor your child’s focus and maximizing the limited time we have to work together in the lesson. Arrive EarlyPlease arrive 5 to 10min early to unpack the instrument, decompress, use the bathroom, etc. Also spend some time visualizing together what will happen in the lesson. Prepare your child’s mind to focus on their teacher and follow directions, and remind them of what they worked so hard on all week. When you arrive early, however, please remember that your lesson will start at the appointed time – I may need those extra few minutes to get my own things ready before you start. Streamline the TransitioningUnpack outside the lesson room, and have the books in hand and ready to place on the stand as you walk in. Please bring as few items into the room as possible. Coats, cases, extra bags, etc can be left outside. Setting tone is very important for young children. I’d love for each child to associate the lesson room strictly with working on the violin. If we minimize the transition and the conversation, then they can come in, place their books on their stand, wait during the 30second practice summary, take their bow, and begin working. If your 3 or 4yo associates the lesson room with talking/unpacking/cuddling/etc, then it may be confusing and frustrating to them when I try to bring their focus back to their tasks. Keep the Practice Summary Concise and to the PointAt the beginning of the lesson, I will ask what was practiced over the course of the week. A thorough summary will help me to plan the lesson flow. With so many students coming for lessons every week (40-50 students), it is impossible for me to remember the details of each student’s assignment. This concise summary will jog my memory and help me plan the next key steps for your child’s progress. However, this summary should also be concise. The goal is to present the information clearly then get to work as quickly as possible so as to not detract from your child’s focus. For children who practice with a home-coach: this summary is best delivered by the home coach. Students who practice on their own can present this summary themselves. Please do not ask your 4/5/6yo to relay the practice information! They will not understand how to be concise and thorough, and it will waste valuable focus-energy as well as valuable time. Here is a good formula for the practice summary:
Honor Your Child's FocusA small child’s focus is a delicate thing. It is so easy for their inquisitive minds to divert from their tasks! However, once we get off-track, it can be difficult to get back on. If you have a question about lesson material in the course of the lesson, please indicate this to me with a non-verbal cue, and I will find the best time for you to ask that question. If you have a lengthy question or a question unrelated to lesson material, please save that for email or a phone conversation. Also remember: playing violin is an incredibly complex task! If I am asking your child to use their mental energy to work on one task, and their focus is interrupted by a 2nd adult saying “Feet! Bow hand! Pinkie!” they may become overwhelmed and frustrated. Dr. Suzuki liked to say: “One Point.” So if we’re focusing on the fingers, perhaps the bow hand will slide – that’s ok: we’ll come back to the bow hand! We’re aiming for progress here, not perfection. Also, if the child is unable to remember all of the preparation steps him or herself, then this is important for us to recognize. We are in no rush – we will wait to introduce more complex tasks until the previous steps have become habits. Model the Practice After the LessonTry to do you best to model your home practice after the lesson structure. For pre-twinkle students, you may find it best to practice in bits throughout the day, but for students who have played a while, you can model the practice to be more like the lesson. For instance: if I introduce note-reading in a series of steps, please use those steps in your note-reading practice at home. If I introduce a practice box in the lesson and break it down into it’s component parts, that’s how I’d like for you to practice at home. The terminology I use in the lesson is terminology I have discovered to be successful through trial and error after a decade+ of teaching hundreds of children like yours! If you use the same terminology at home that I use in the lesson, your child and I will be able to communicate much more clearly than if you substitute different terminology for the rest of the week. Ie: sleepy fingers, bread&meat, SectionA/A’/B/etc, zip&step, soft fingers, etc. Take Careful NotesAs a general rule, students who are the most consistently prepared are the students whose parents take the most careful and organized notes. Use this format for your notes:
Leave the Conversation for Later Each of my students and their parents have such interesting lives and stories – I am blessed to be able to work with each one of you! The lesson time, however, may not be the best time for casual conversations. Prior to the lesson, we are setting the tone of positive, focused work. During the lesson we are honoring the child’s focus. After the lesson, I may have another student waiting to make the most of their lesson time, or I may have a break (only 15min to grab that bite of dinner, make that photocopy, and prepare for that group lesson!), or if you are my last student at 7:30pm, I may need to scramble home to a dinner that is waiting for me, or I may be trying to make that 8pm Yoga class! If you have a question or a matter you’d like to discuss, please know I’d absolutely love to discuss this with you – email me and we’ll set up a time to chat on the phone.
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Good news: your child is 100% normal! Here are some ideas to help smooth things over on the home front. Please let me know what works best for you, and add new ideas in the comments section for other parents to peruse and enjoy! Feed Intrinsic Motivation through your Lifestyle
Build Habits and Routines
Birds of a Feather Flock Together
Assist through tricky times with External Motivators
No Need to Reinvent the Wheel
Dr. Suzuki's philosophy of music education is based around his observations of how children learn to speak. From birth they are surrounded by their native language. For many months they don't speak, yet they are constantly exposed to the language. Eventually, they learn to form the basic sounds of their native tongue, and still later they will begin forming words. All the while being constantly exposed to this language. So then we transfer this to the violin....in an ideal Suzuki violin world, the child would begin listening to the Suzuki pieces being played live by people he/she loves every single day. Then when s/he is ready, the ability to play is pieced together in very tiny bits coupled with much praise. Throughout the day, the student would have access to the violin and be able to try things in 3 to 5min increments, gradually building stamina as ability is acquired. Constantly being surrounded by the music s/he will learn to play. Pressure to play "better and better" is non-existent, yet the environment is always conducive to learning, and the instrument is always available. This is a tricky environment to create in our over-booked American lifestyles, so we modify. Thankfully we live in an era when technology is so accessible. It is easier than ever to find ways to listen to the Suzuki recordings. So often when I encounter students who are struggling to learn new pieces, or struggling to remember notes in old pieces I discover that the parent is not yet understanding how or why their child should be listening to the Suzuki CD. It is so sad to me to see a child brimming full of talent, who would love to play and who puts great effort into practicing....who has loving parents willing to sacrifice time and finances to get the child to their lessons and to practice with the child....it is sad to me to see this, only to recognize the child is genuinely struggling week after week to learn and retain simply because the "play" button is not being pressed reliably at home. I recognize that we feel demands and pressure on all sides, and that adding the task of "listening" seems to be just another thing to add to the list. I'd like to list below why I think that daily listening to the entire CD will actually decrease your feelings of stress and pressure regarding the violin:
I fact – I will go so far as to say, that listening is so important for your child’s violinistic happiness, that if there is not enough time to listen at home, I think it’d be a better use of lesson time for me to play the Suzuki pieces for him or her in the lesson, rather than teach him or her the notes of a foreign piece they simply can’t recall mentally.
I hope you are staying warm and safe in this very cold, snowy spell. In addition to protecting ourselves, we need to also think about protecting our instruments. When wood is introduced to temperature and humidity shifts, it constricts and expands. This can cause the pegs in the pegbox to come loose and slip. You may have noticed a time or two when you open the case and some strings are floppy. At first, this is disconcerting - but it is not broken. It is just rather inconvenient! The problem this creates is that until the instrument is re-tuned, the student cannot practice properly. When we practice, it is equally important to train the ear as it is the fingers. When we practice with an instrument that is out of tune, we train the ear at best to disregard listening, and at worst to accept and regard as normal poor intonation. This is not always avoidable, but please take care in the following ways:
Some people find note taking to be a daunting task: what is important to write? What is not important? How do I format my notes to have them be most accessible while practicing at home? Why take notes – things seem so simple to remember: we’re doing the same things we did the week before…and the week before…and the week before.
I find that the students who make the most consistent progress often have parents who take the most notes, and who write them in a format that is easily accessible when they are home practicing. While there are some exceptions, students whose parents do not take notes (or who take very few notes) tend to have slower progress through the repertoire. As a teacher, it is frankly discouraging to be working with a student, only to look up and notice that mom or dad does not have a notebook open and ready. Yet on the flip side of the coin, I become very encouraged when I’m working with a student, and suddenly they turn to their parent and say "Write that down, Mom! I want to practice that at home!" I recommend writing notes in outline form using a standard 8.5”X11” size notebook. Each topic/activity gets large print, and then the details of each activity are described in bullet points. While lessons may seem like stream-of-conscious, this is not often the best way to write notes. Pay attention carefully so you can sort out the project we are working on, and the focus point for improvement with that project. In practice, you will want to approach the projects exactly how we do it in the lesson – and then carry the concept further into the realm of fluidity and ease. Many parents find it helpful to write down the exact descriptive words I use. Some write down the various phrases I say when correcting/guiding/encouraging. In addition to words, also write down descriptors for how I guide your child. Sometimes I may guide their hands physically, other times I will try to guide them verbally, sometimes I will alternate between two activities. Draw pictures for yourself of positioning. And please – ask questions if you don’t understand what to write! What do you find most helpful while taking notes? Please let me know in the comments! The layout of a good practice session varies depending on where the student is working in the repertoire. A pre-twinkler’s practice will be structured differently from a Bk4 student’s session, and a deeply motivated learner will have a practice session that differs from a student who is a more casual learner. Sometimes it seems like I assign a lot of little things, however if you just touch each every day, it’s enough! Here are some sample practice routines that you can manipulate and change as you wish. Please comment and share what has worked for you!
When a child first begins study between the ages of 4 to 8, the parent is a very active home-teacher or practice coach. This partnership sets the pattern for problem solving methodologies and consistency. However, as the student matures, this partnership necessarily evolves. The final goal is for the student to learn independently and the parent to be an encouraging cheerleader. This will take place sometime between 9yo and 12yo. Often, the role of the practice coach in the transition time between these two states can feel a bit murky!
If t goal as a practice coach is to point the way toward independent learning and eventually to get out of the way in order to allow this to happen, we should consider how we guide the student’s minds even from the earliest Suzuki years. It is very easy to point out behaviors and create fine little players through adjusting this finger, and that note, and the other slur: but it’s vastly more important to develop within each player the thinking process behind the changes. Be prepared: going about things this way often seems much slower! So…how do we encourage young violinists to use their thinking minds?
Why do we study the violin? Why do we devote countless hours to practicing, going to lessons, and preparing for recitals? Why do we devote hundreds (thousands!) of dollars to this endeavor? Why do we persevere through those days of struggle, tears, and tricky attitudes? Of course, there are many reasons that are easy to list: promotes the development of work ethic, develops problem-solving skills, encourages cognitive development through integration of very different skill sets (physical, cognitive, sensory, and social skills), provides an outlet for creativity, introduces children to a treasured art form, etc. The list goes on and on! But take a moment to think about this list. From a child’s perspective. Are any of these reasons the sorts of reasons that would motivate a person who does not have the benefit of years of life experience behind them? What motivates children? Or even more to the point: what motivates your child?
Often, the first few months of violin playing come more or less easily to a student. Months of anticipation culminate in the beginning of violin lessons. Everything is new and exciting! The child learns to hold the instrument, then s/he learns to play rhythms on open strings, then s/he learns to use fingers, and play their first song: Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star and Variations! Then they enjoy the early pieces in Bk 1. But often, somewhere between 1 or 2 years of study, students and their parents may begin to run into a bit of lack of enthusiasm or even resistance toward practicing. This can be a bit confusing to parents: why I smy child not enjoying violin now when it seemed so enjoyable just a few months ago? What changed? How do we get this joy back? If and when this happens – because it happens at some point(s) to every student! – we as adults need to focus more on fostering the child’s own vision. Adults are happy to work and go through discomfort when they see a reason; when there is a goal worth sacrificing for…and children are no different! This goal may be learning the next song. It may be the reward at the end of a sticker chart. It may be a desire to “keep up” with their friends (though this one is very tricky! Comparing, either positively or negatively - is all too often deadly to a young violinist’s love for the instrument). But after a while, even these extrinsic motivators can begin to fall short. The best way to encourage practicing is through the fostering of intrinsic motivation. Children naturally desire to please adults – show them you are pleased! Children love to create something new – allow some space for exploration. Children seek things that are new and full of wonder – find a way to allow wonder to permeate even the “mundane” tasks of everyday practice. Children love to do things that others are doing – arrange play dates with other young students apart from the violin to foster friendships which will strengthen the group class camaraderie. Below are some additional ideas. Please let me know which of these ideas has motivated your child. Include additional ideas in the comments section for other families to try!
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February 2015
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